#34 : Descendants of Darkness (Yami no Matsuei)

(13 episodes)

What’s it about ?

Adaptation of an urban fantasy shojo manga series. With vampires !

Characters

The heroes are part of an agency that regulates the undead living hidden in our world. They’re undead themselves, of course. (And nearly all handsome dudes, because shojo.) Most of the time this is just boring paperwork, but sometimes field agents are required to intervene.

Tsuzuki is one such field agent. Apparently so annoying and obnoxious that he just can’t keep partners. Not that he looks so awful in this episode to me, but maybe he coworkers know something I don’t.

Hisoka is a newbie who’s been assigned as his new partner ; it’s mutual irritation at first sight. The fact that he looks 16 (having died at that age) and Tsuzuki often treats him as such doesn’t help.

Our first case of the season involves a vampire serial killer in the area they’re assigned to ; cue their squabbling while investigating it.

Production Values

Decent enough, but those are very “modern shojo” character designs indeed, all angles.

Overall Impression

Hmmm. There’s some entertaining stuff here, especially the quirky premise… but the execution feels slightly lacking ; I can’t quite pinpoint it (the leads not being that charismatic ? the lack of suspense ? the case of the week not being very interesting ?), but it just doesn’t grab me.

Maybe it’s the all-male cast (aside from the baddie) rubbing me the wrong way. I don’t think I’m the target audience.

Source: [In Which I Review] Anime series from 2000 – Page 9

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Jhiday

I've been kinda blogging about anime for years... but mostly on forums (such as RPG.net's Tangency) and other sites. This site is an archive for all that stuff, just in case.

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